Wind Canyon

The Wind Canyon Nature Trial is the second most stunning trail I have hiked in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The following photographs are a sample of the awesome beauty of this short, child friendly nature trail located in the south unit.

Training for a century!

Working towards my goal .... nothing too crazy yet, a few bike rides to and from work, making a point to get out walking regularly and hope to get some good riding/ hiking done this weekend. Not being sure if the hike/ walk part of my life really has any impact i did some reading and found this

... provide some variety to your workout. Even more variety can be found in mountain biking or roller riding. This is important, because if training gets boring, it most likely gets less intense and possibly less frequent. So don't be afraid to try something new, even if that means competing in a USCF event or even a triathlon. Cross-training is also a bonus for distance cycling because overall body fitness is the key to fighting fatigue in long events. My weekly schedule includes running, hiking, weight lifting, Tae Kwon Do, racquetball, and ultimate frisbee and I am convinced this is an asset to me on the bike....(http://www.adventurecorps.com/way/dctrain.html)

The person who wrote this has done a double century, I think I can trust this advice =) During the same search I found this, that I think I will implement in September, way more than 10 weeks out, but if I can build up to it sooner why not =)

Century Training Plan
Week	Length of Long Ride	Total Miles/Week
1	25	55
2	30	65
3	35	73
4	40	81
5	45	90
6	50	99
7	57	110
8	65	122
9	50	75
10	Century Ride	Yeah!

Minot North Dakota

On our way back from the Turtle Mountains we pass through Minot, interested in what the city had to offer and in serious need of coffee to keep us going.

Strolling our way through the downtown are was a wonderful experience, Finding the Black Iguana 109 South Maine Street was the start of something magical. Black Iguana is a art gallery/ workshop with a fantastic Batista and quality ingredients. ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/61840767@N07/5830484570/ ) After our caffeine fix we and a creative refresh we headed outside and got to chat with a cheese truck, talk about a yummy idea. 

Next stop was a funky basement art gallery. 62 Doors Gallery and Studio where we spent the next part of an hour chatting with resident artists and their friends. 

We simply fell in love with this space and the amazing artists who create there. 

Having more to see we wandered around downtown a bit

Before heading to the heritage park that had an abundance of fantastic photo opportunities.

great photos taken and we had to say our good bye to Minot, pleasantly surprised at its general awesomeness.

Oil Well explosion, North Dakota

Not wanting this to go by unnoticed.....

Crews clean at oil well blowout site

WILLISTON — Cleanup crews baled contaminated vegetation, scraped away affected soil and power washed equipment Monday after an oil well blowout south of here that sprayed oil and salt water into nearby fields.

By: Amy Dalrymple, The Dickinson Press

• Site

Amy Dalrymple/Forum Communications Kris Roberts, an environmental geologist with the North Dakota Department of Health Division of Water Quality, oversees the cleanup of an oil well blowout near Williston.

 Talk about it

WILLISTON — Cleanup crews baled contaminated vegetation, scraped away affected soil and power washed equipment Monday after an oil well blowout south of here that sprayed oil and salt water into nearby fields.

Meanwhile, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the death of a worker who was struck by a pickup as a worker drove it away from the spewing oil.

The blowout, which sprayed 400 barrels of oil and 400 barrels of produced water used for hydraulic fracturing, is not believed to have contaminated water sources, said Kris Roberts, an environmental geologist with the North Dakota Department of Health Division of Water Quality.
However, the cleanup contractor expanded the perimeter of the affected area because workers were seeing vegetation that was wilting and turning brown, Roberts said. The area that was most heavily affected is estimated to be about 30 to 40 acres. A mist of oil and salt water is believed to have extended no further than a mile in opposite directions of the well, affecting crop and pasture land.

Workers estimated they recovered about 200 barrels of each fluid as they got control of the well, Roberts said. The incident occurred during the evening of Aug. 14 and into the next day.
Cleanup crews placed absorbent booms to prevent the contamination from spreading to Long Creek, which empties into Lake Sakakawea. They also worked to cut and remove vegetation that was contaminated, Roberts said.

“By getting it out of there as quickly as possible, we will see very little impact to the soil itself,” Roberts said.

Crews had completed the drilling and hydraulic fracturing process for that well and were completing the well for production when the blowout occurred, Roberts said.

The release of salt water and chemical solution is more devastating than an oil spill, Roberts said.
“A lot of times, if it’s just an oil release, vegetation will have completely recovered by the next season,” he said. “With a salt water release, if we don’t handle it properly and quickly, that type of impact could last three years.”

The company that controlled the well, Zavanna, which is based in Denver, is cooperating with the cleanup and being proactive, Roberts said.

“They are very concerned with the impacts and working to clean up the impact so that the landowners have as little problem as possible,” Roberts said.

Roberts said Zavanna also deserves a pat on the back for the design of its well site, which has a raised area similar to a racetrack around the site. That design helped contain the spill.
The company could face fines from the Department of Health or the Department of Mineral Resources, depending on the outcome of the investigation.

Zavanna did not return calls seeking comment.

Field inspectors from the Department of Mineral Resources are investigating what led to the incident, said spokeswoman Alison Ritter.

The Environmental Protection Agency has been advised of the spill but so far is not involved, Roberts said.

Wayne Biberdorf, a former Hess Corp. engineer who now serves as energy impact coordinator for Gov. Jack Dalrymple, said a blowout incident is rare, and industry leaders will be studying this case. A blowout is an uncontrolled release of reservoir fluids into the wellbore.

“Even a small number is serious,” said Biberdorf, who was not familiar with the specifics of this incident. “Most companies take a long, hard look at those types of incidents.”
Roberts estimates that health officials have responded to about four or five blowout incidents in the past two years.

“It’s very few, considering the number of oil wells that are being drilled and the ones that are already in existence,” Roberts said.

Eric Brooks, assistant director for the Bismarck Area OSHA Office, said the victim worked for Steamboat Energy Consultants as an independent contractor who oversaw the operation of the workover rig.

The man was identified as 39-year-old Jason Pinasco of Higden, Ark.

As oil was spraying all over, workers moved their pickups away from the well, Brooks said. One of the pickups struck and killed Pinasco. Brooks said he did not have information about the driver’s employer.

Williams County Sheriff Scott Busching said his office considers the case an accident. The Williams County State’s Attorney’s Office was still reviewing the case on Monday.

This is the eighth workplace death from the oil and gas industry since Oct. 1 that the Bismarck Area OSHA Office has investigated.

Pinasco was married and had a son and daughter, according to an obituary published in Farmington, N.M. The obituary said he spent his career working in the oilfield.

“He loved his work and the wonderful people he met all over the states,” the obituary reads.
A representative from Steamboat Energy Consultants referred questions to Zavanna.
Dalrymple is a reporter stationed in the Oil Patch. Reach her at adalrymple@forumcomm.com or 701- 580-6890.

The Wedding Dress

early stages of tagging 

the original back

finished in the closet

Wedding Day

Century Training Days 3 and 4

Back from my wedding and starting back up with my training for a century. I spoke with my brother who told me that when he was first training he was doing time not distance(which i am doing) and told me that once he switched to distance he made much greater gains... so at some point ill have to make that shift. I am not mentally ready for that as of now however.

The first day back, day three of my training I had absoultly zero desire to get back on a bike, but knowing i had to do something i went for a brisk mile and a half walk ... but its something

Today i work myself up bright and early and biked to work, it was slightly chilly, my fingers got  bit cold but overall it was great!

Roosevelt's Badlands Ranch Faces Potential Threat

August 7, 2012

Theodore Roosevelt's Elkhorn Ranch in North Dakota is often called the Walden Pond of the West. But Roosevelt's ranch is now feeling the pressure of an oil boom that is industrializing the local landscape. Critics say a proposed gravel pit and a bridge could destroy the very thing that made such a lasting impression on Roosevelt: the restorative power of wilderness.

Roosevelt first came to the western North Dakota Badlands in 1883 to shoot one of the area's few remaining buffalo. He got his trophy, but he also fell in love with the landscape and cattle ranching.

He came back in 1884 and rode 30 miles up the Little Missouri River from the nearest town and found an isolated site on the river bank that suited him. That's where he built a big cabin called the Elkhorn Ranch.

Leaving New York Behind

Driving those 30 miles on a dirt road recently, Roosevelt National Park Superintendent Valerie Naylor describes that chapter in Roosevelt's life.

"When he went back home in February of 1884, his wife died two days after giving birth to their child," she says. "And his mother died in the same house, on the same day. And he was devastated. So later in the year, he came out here to mourn — and really to leave his life in New York behind and to become a cattle rancher in Dakota Territory."

The Elkhorn Ranch is in the North Dakota Badlands, which are, in fact, beautiful. The area is crisscrossed with ravines called coulees: meadows at their bottoms, with tree-lined sides bordered by gray and red walls. Fantastical rock formations fracture the horizon.

Naylor points out the old hand-dug well and the ranch house's massive foundation stones cut from granite. But that's all that's left today.

"That is one thing that's so special about the Elkhorn Ranch. We don't have anything that's reconstructed here," she says. "We just have a site. And it's the way that it was, for the most part, when Roosevelt first found it in the summer of 1884."

'A Place Of Extreme Solitude'

The leaves of massive cottonwoods, some of which were probably here when Roosevelt was, quake in the wind. The trees line the Little Missouri River, winding like a brown snake through the gray cliffs.

"You can see and hear things that many people have never seen and heard," Naylor says. "That is, a landscape without any development, and all natural sounds: birds, wind in the cottonwood trees."

The Meadowlarks Of Elkhorn Ranch

Listen to the song of a meadowlark at Roosevelt National Park

When he wasn't working with cattle, Roosevelt sat on the cabin's broad veranda — a place for recovery, reverie and reflection about the future of the West.

Historian Douglas Brinkley calls the ranch "a place of extreme solitude and historical sanctity, a place where Theodore Roosevelt generated his ideas for his crusade to save wild and special places in the United States."

Brinkley is the author of Wilderness Warrior, a history of Roosevelt's conservationist accomplishments.

"Theodore Roosevelt, as president, saved over 234 million acres of wild America," he says. "There's been no president that's come close to accomplishing what Theodore Roosevelt did in the environmental realm. And that was over a hundred years ago."

Seeing Threat In An Oil Boom

Conservationists fear that North Dakota's oil boom will ruin the ranch's contemplative seclusion; that wells will be drilled along the ridges lining the Little Missouri; that a dusty, noisy gravel mine just across the river will soon start up; and that a big bridge will soon be built too near the ranch.

"We know damn well where that bridge belongs," says Jim Arthaud, chairman of the Billings County Board of Commissioners. "On federal ground, about three miles north."

Arthaud also owns a trucking company. He says the bridge will be out of earshot and eyesight of the ranch. But studies of those effects have not been completed. It is estimated that at least 1,000 trucks a day would cross the bridge. But Arthaud says tourists would use it, too.

"The whole public would be able to use that place, not just the elitist environmentalists," he says. "That lousy 50, however many acres it is, 200 acres or whatever, where Teddy sat there and rested his head and found himself."

The owner of the gravel mine rights just across the river from Elkhorn has agreed to negotiate with the Forest Service about possibly relocating. But Arthaud says even if that happens, it won't set a precedent for the ranch region's future. Development, he says, is just a matter of time.

"That Elkhorn Ranch site is surrounded by people that own mineral rights," Arthaud says, "and it's going to get developed."

There's pressure on President Obama to declare the surrounding area a national monument, an executive order tool often used by Roosevelt and more recently by Bill Clinton. If that should happen, Arthaud says, the locals would raise hell and do everything in their power to reverse it.

John McChesney is the director of the Rural West Project of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University.

http://www.npr.org/2012/08/07/156761044/roosevelts-badlands-ranch-faces-potential-threat